2000

This book is not about what we expected. It is about what we got instead. As the calendar flipped from 1999 to 2000, the world collectively held its breath. Years of media hysteria had whipped up a frenzy of fear about the "Y2K bug," a looming technological catastrophe that was supposed to cripple everything from financial markets to air traffic control. Pundits warned of a new Dark Age, a global systems failure that would plunge civilization into chaos.

But then, nothing happened. The lights stayed on, the planes stayed in the sky, and the ATMs continued to dispense cash. In the end, the new millennium arrived with a quiet, almost embarrassing thud. We had prepared for a cataclysm, a dramatic punctuation mark at the end of the 20th century, and instead we were greeted with a shrug. The big story of January 1st, 2000, was that there was no story.

And yet, beneath that deceptive calm, the world was in a state of profound and unprecedented change. The ticking clock of the millennium bug was a red herring. The real forces of flux were already at work, quietly and relentlessly rewiring the global system from the inside out. The year 2000 was a silent revolution, a pivotal moment where the digital future we had only theorized about began to truly arrive.